18-letter words containing o, r, c, a, s
- postal storage car — a railroad car for transporting unsorted mail.
- potassium chlorate — a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, KClO 3 , used chiefly as an oxidizing agent in the manufacture of explosives, fireworks, matches, bleaches, and disinfectants.
- potassium chloride — a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid, KCl, used chiefly in the manufacture of fertilizers and mineral water, and as a source of other potassium compounds.
- pragmatic sanction — any one of various imperial decrees with the effect of fundamental law.
- precedence lossage — /pre's*-dens los'*j/ A misunderstanding of operator precedence resulting in unintended grouping of arithmetic or logical operators when coding an expression. Used especially of mistakes in C code due to the nonintuitively low precedence of "&", "|", "^", "<<" and ">>". For example, the following C expression, intended to test the least significant bit of x, x & 1 == 0 is parsed as x & (1 == 0) which is always zero (false). Some lazy programmers ignore precedence and parenthesise everything. Lisp fans enjoy pointing out that this can't happen in *their* favourite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere.
- preparatory school — a private or parochial secondary school, especially one boarding its students and providing a college-preparatory education.
- price on sb's head — If there is a price on someone 's head, an amount of money has been offered for the capture or killing of that person.
- prince of darkness — Satan.
- processionary moth — a moth of the family Thaumetopoeidae, esp the oak processionary moth (Thaumetopoea processionea), the larvae of which leave the communal shelter nightly for food in a V-shaped procession
- procrustean string — (programming) A fixed-length string. If a string value is too long for the allocated space, it is truncated to fit; and if it is shorter, the empty space is padded, usually with space characters. This is an allusion to Procrustes, a legendary robber of ancient Attica. He bound his victims to a bed, and if they were shorter than the bed, he stretched their limbs until they would fit; if their limbs were longer, he lopped them off.
- programmer's cheer — (humour) "Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up, push down! Byte! Byte! Byte!" [Origin?]
- property insurance — insurance coverage for land and housing
- provascular tissue — procambium.
- provision merchant — a person or company in the business of retailing food and other provisions
- pseudo-anarchistic — a person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.
- psychogalvanometer — a type of galvanometer for detecting and measuring psychogalvanic currents.
- psychopharmacology — the branch of pharmacology dealing with the psychological effects of drugs.
- psychotherapeutics — psychotherapy.
- pulmonic airstream — a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.
- purchasing officer — the member of staff in an organization who is responsible for buying goods or products
- pyrosulphuric acid — a fuming liquid acid made by adding sulphur trioxide to concentrated sulphuric acid. Formula: H2S2O7
- quality of service — (communications, networking) (QoS) The performance properties of a network service, possibly including throughput, transit delay, priority. Some protocols allow packets or streams to include QoS requirements.
- racial segregation — social policy: separation of races
- radiation sickness — sickness caused by irradiation with x-rays or other nuclear radiation as a result of therapeutic treatment, accidental exposure, or a nuclear bomb explosion and characterized by nausea, vomiting, headache, cramps, diarrhea, loss of hair and teeth, destruction of white blood cells, and prolonged hemorrhage.
- radical expression — an expression in which radical signs appear.
- radioactive series — a succession of elements initiated in the radioactive decay of a parent, as thorium or uranium, each of which decays into the next until a stable element, usually lead, is produced.
- rain cats and dogs — water that is condensed from the aqueous vapor in the atmosphere and falls to earth in drops more than 1/50 inch (0.5 mm) in diameter. Compare drizzle (def 6).
- raman spectroscopy — a form of spectroscopy which uses the Raman effect for studying molecules
- real-estate office — the place where a real-estate agent works
- recess appointment — a person appointed to an office by the President of the United States without approval from the Senate because the Senate is in recess
- reconnaissance car — a specially equipped and armed car used for making military reconnaissance.
- reduction strategy — (theory) An algorithm for deciding which redex(es) to reduce next. Different strategies have different termination properties in the presence of recursive functions or values. See string reduction, normal order reduction, applicative order reduction, parallel reduction
- registered company — a company which has officially registered its business
- reinforced plastic — plastic with fibrous matter, such as carbon fibre, embedded in it to confer additional strength
- reprocessing plant — a plant where materials are treated in order to make them reusable
- rescind a contract — If an insurer rescinds an insurance contract, it terminates it because facts have been concealed or misrepresented by the proposer.
- residential school — (in Canada) a boarding school maintained by the Canadian government for Indian and Inuit children from sparsely populated settlements
- restoration comedy — English comedy of the period of the Restoration, stressing manners and social satire.
- resurrection plant — a desert plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, occurring from Texas to South America, having stems that curl inward when dry.
- resuscitation room — an intensive care unit
- rhodes scholarship — one of a number of scholarships at Oxford University, established by the will of Cecil Rhodes, for selected students (Rhodes scholars) from the British Commonwealth and the United States.
- rolling resistance — The rolling resistance of a wheel or ball is its resistance to movement caused by friction between it and the surface it is rolling on.
- rotary clothesline — an apparatus of radiating spokes that support lines on which clothes are hung to dry
- schofield barracks — a town on central Oahu, in central Hawaii.
- scholarship holder — a person who, because of academic merit, receives financial aid for their studies
- school certificate — (in England and Wales between 1917 and 1951 and currently in New Zealand) a certificate awarded to school pupils who pass a public examination: the equivalent of GCSE
- school for scandal — a comedy of manners (1777) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
- science dictionary — a specialized dictionary covering terms in the life, earth, and physical sciences, such as the online Science Dictionary on Dictionary.com. A science dictionary includes many technical terms with precise, specialized meanings—terms not normally found in general dictionaries—making it an invaluable resource for students and professionals in scientific fields.
- scissors-and-paste — designating or of a piece of writing that has been assembled from a variety of sources rather than by original research, often in a hasty or uninspired way
- scottish secretary — the Secretary of State for Scotland, head of the Scotland Office, a UK government department with responsibility for some Scottish affairs